Patriarchy does not simply mean that men rule. Indeed, it is a particular value system that not only requires men to marry but to marry a woman of proper station. It competes with many other male visions of the good life, and for that reason alone is prone to come in cycles. Yet before it degenerates, it is a cultural regime that serves to keep birthrates high among the affluent, while also maximizing parents’ investments in their children. No advanced civilization has yet learned how to endure without it.
Through a process of cultural evolution, societies that adopted this particular social system—which involves far more than simple male domination—maximized their population and therefore their power, whereas those that didn’t were either overrun or absorbed. This cycle in human history may be obnoxious to the enlightened, but it is set to make a comeback.
Oh, crap. You don't think an article like this isn't going to piss me off, do you? There's so much crap to wade through, it's going to take a while, so settle yourself in while I eviscerate the article here and argue that The Return of Patriarchy is more bullshit from the current issue of FP.
Here's the argument in a nutshell. I'll go into further detail as I come across the passages that make my blood boil. In essence, "well-fed, healthy, peaceful populations" are producing too few children to replace them. Therefore, it's only a matter of time before these populations fade into obscurity, to be replaced by...
Now, here's where the argument gets interesting. The author could have said something gravely offensive, like, "wogs will rule the earth." You know. Those people are breeding like rabbits and they will simply overwhelm us western, good folks. (I say this 'coz we've heard this argument ad nauseum.) But, instead, the author delivers a body-slam to liberals, because lo and behold, the people who are going forth and multiplying are, you guessed it, conservative, right-wing families and thus it turns out that liberals are going to non-breed themselves right into extinction. Well, shit. Didn't see that one coming, did you?
So, let me start from the beginning and try to set up a counterpoint to the arguments being put forth, or at least point out where this article seems to verge awfully close to something that looks like feminist-bashing, "uppity women are ruining us" kind of stuff. (And I don't know the author, so I'm not trying to pin a tail on his ass, but...)
It has been well-documented that fertility rates fluctuate, as do rates at which people reproduce. Certain cultures go through phases in which large parts of the population do not have children, or marry much later, thus restricting the number of children they might have (most famous example: European Marriage Pattern). What prevents these societies from simply disappearing altogether?
Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.
Patriarchy swoops in to save the day. And it is there that Longman states the two paragraphs that I've quoted above. Strong societies--the ones that survived--were patriarchal. Those societies that did not adopt patriarchal practices died out. (Please give me my props for not inserting snark here.)
Okay. I'm going to start quoting text here, with my commentary interspersed, because I want to point to the exact moments where I started feeling that perhaps the assumptions that this article makes are fucking bullshit.
The historical relation between patriarchy, population, and power has deep implications for our own time. As the United States is discovering today in Iraq, population is still power. Smart bombs, laser-guided missiles, and unmanned drones may vastly extend the violent reach of a hegemonic power. But ultimately, it is often the number of boots on the ground that changes history. Even with a fertility rate near replacement level, the United States lacks the amount of people necessary to sustain an imperial role in the world, just as Britain lost its ability to do so after its birthrates collapsed in the early 20th century. For countries such as China, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain, in which one-child families are now the norm, the quality of human capital may be high, but it has literally become too rare to put at risk.
